Old age far from gentle for Japan's greying homeless

Reuters 01 March 2013

Kyoko Machiya should be enjoying life with grandchildren. Instead, the 64-year-old's home is a makeshift structure of boxes covered with blue plastic in a Tokyo park. Homelessness in Japan is a decades-old issue, yet it has a worrying new twist. A vast majority of the homeless are now ageing, a reflection of the overall greying of Japanese society that poses new problems for policy makers. (762 Words) - By Teppei Kasai